Peacock brings joy to East Texas family by moving in with them

WHITEHOUSE, Tex. (KETK) – This is Fred the Peacock. He’s about 2 years old and he lives in John Moore’s yard, well South of Tyler.

“It was just a couple of weeks after my father passed away and I’d been out of state and had just gotten home,” said Moore. “And I looked out the front window and turned to my wife and I said, there’s a peacock in our front yard.”

After some research and trying to re-home the bird, they realized Fred was already home.

“Fred sort of owns us, we don’t own fred. Fred showed up, claimed the place, nice enough to let us hang out here,” said Moore.

When we asked Moore why he chose the name Fred, he had a simple answer.

“He’s named after a friend of mine who liked strutting in front of the ladies,” said Moore.

Fred has a sister, Cola the black cat.

Moore says Cola likes to chase Fred, but Fred doesn’t enjoy it as much as Cola.

They say Fred brightens up the place, as long as the red grapes are plentiful.

“Fred’s here for the grapes, I’m pretty sure,” said Moore.

And he says he believes that Fred arriving when he did is not a coincidence.

“Supposedly there’s some connection between peacocks and the afterlife. I have no idea if there’s any truth to that, but he certainly showed up at the right time for me anyway. You know, I needed something happy at a very sad time and Fred is happy.”

Happy and sort of internet famous too. You can follow his antics online.

“People were like more Fred, give us more Fred, so I thought well I’ll give him his own Facebook page. So I did and within hours he had 400 followers and it keeps growing,” said Moore.

Moore says Fred is considering making a trip to New York, where he hopes to make his dream of becoming the NBC Peacock a reality.